The Border Directed by Tony Richardson Starring Jack Nicholson, Harvey Keitel and Elpidia Carrillo BUY IT A L S O_.T O D A Y Blue Glow From Bogie to Tarantino: AFI's top crime flicks Now Showing New video releases for June 30 Y E S T E R D A Y American Squirm By Sarah Vowell Fishers of men: Two offbeat TV talk shows reinvent the celebrity interview (06/29/98) R E C E N T_. M O V I E S Heroine chic By Lori Leibovich Ally Sheedy talks about the hard road to "High Art" (06/25/98) Doctor Dolittle Reviewed by Stephanie Zacharek Eddie Murphy and talking critters have fun with barnyard humor (06/25/98) Home Movies By Charles Taylor L.A. transcendental: The dark side of Hollywood's New Age (06/23/98) The X-Files Reviewed by Joyce Millman The movie fans have been waiting for is just a big tease (06/19/98) Mulan Reviewed by Jenn Shreve Disney's first heroic female protagonist battles Huns and gender stereotypes with equal valor (06/19/98) BROWSE THE MOVIE ARCHIVES COLUMNS FEATURES REVIEWS INTERVIEWS

[ H O M E_.M O V I E S_.B Y_.C H A R L E S_.T A Y L O R ]________ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The broken promised land Jack Nicholson is at his best playing a burned-out border patrol officer in a small Texas town. Over the credits of 1982's "The Border," Freddy Fender sings "Across the Borderline," a song written for the film by Ry Cooder, John Hiatt and Jim Dickinson. The lyrics tell an old story. There's a land So I've been told Every street is paved with gold And it's just across the borderline ... And when you reach the broken promised land Every dream slips through your hand You'll lose much more than you ever hoped to find. Fender (nee Baldemar Huerta) was 45 and six years past his last Top 40 hit when he sang that song. He had lived a version of it: years of playing the Tex-Mex circuit and a stretch in prison before a brief taste of mainstream success in the '70s. But you don't need to know that because the story of dreams that persist despite being dashed again and again is all there in Fender's high vibrato. Only the worst kind of cynic would think that the dream he envisions in this song is a lie. The streets of gold exist for Fender because he's seen them, walked on them. He knows what it costs to even imagine seeing them again ("You pay the price to come this far/Just to wind up where you are"), and yet he won't give up that hope. The American Dream is so familiar a notion to us that perhaps we're ready to dismiss it entirely as propaganda. That's the way it's been used, the way it will be used this coming Fourth of July weekend by commentators and politicians. In "The Border," it's dreamed by immigrants and citizens alike. This movie is the story of Maria (Elpidia Carrillo), a young Mexican woman who tries again and again to cross the Rio Grande into Texas with her infant son and her 12-year-old brother. Maria and others like her are picked up by the border patrol, processed and sent back across the river to await their next chance. "The Border" is also the story of Charlie (Jack Nicholson), a man who's joined the Texas border patrol hoping to lose the crummy feeling that had grown on him like lichen during his years as an INS agent making futile busts in L.A. sweatshops. Charlie has seen the sweatshop owners go untouched while he arrested a few hapless workers to meet his quota. He knew they'd be back in the same jobs in no time. He takes the Texas border patrol job at the prodding of his wife, Marcy (Valerie Perrine, in a note-perfect caricature of cheerful, mindless consumerism), whose version of the American Dream is purely material, no more than a new house in a planned suburb and the cheap furniture she fills it with. What Charlie finds is a job that feels more futile than the one he left behind and a racket that makes him feel dirtier than he ever imagined possible. N E X T_P A G E _| Corruption at the border